Tall Blacks Win in China

The Tall Blacks have shrugged off a busy travel schedule and limited time since arriving in China to open their four nation tournament account with a 75-66 win over Cameroon.

The team arrived into China only yesterday on the back of their two game series in Korea and immediately went to work in the tournament that also includes Ivory Coast and a local Chinese combination.

Head coach Nenad Vucinic was pleased with the performance.

“It was a good overall performance, Cameroon do not look like the strongest team here, we will certainly have to play better against next two teams but for the first game in China it was not too bad and we will build on this.

“Our defence was good until last quarter when we led by 20 but we dropped our intensity a little and they caught up to close the score to 9 points at the end. For us there were no real high scorers or dominatnt players on the stat sheet, we rotated our roster a lot with no one playing more than 22 minutes or so.”

Vucinic did get Casey Frank on the floor after he and Nick Horvath both missed the games in Korea.

“We managed to give Casey about 10 minutes tonight and considering the time he has had out, he played well. We won’t play Nick in this tournament this week but will look to get him involved next week.”

Game two for New Zealand is against Ivory Coast tomorrow, schedule details below.

The Tall Blacks will be available on a media teleconference call on Sunday at midday NZT to review the game. A coach and player will be available on the call.